Killing Two Birds With One Stone For Financial Tasks

People often say for most things the keys is organization as even when it comes to money knowing how much you are bringing in and spending is pretty important in understanding your financial situation. I was thinking today as there was a person who needed a major financial overhaul as he was in massive debt and has no idea really where his money goes. Not surprisingly, things like his room had bills all over the place with no sense of organization. Have a bill? Throw it in the corner and deal with it later essentially.

I was questioning why he would even live like that as the disorganization must be stressful at times. The basic answer is that doing various things like filing away statements takes too much time where he has to go out of his way to do it. I then reflected this for myself and what I do differently. What I immediately thought about is that I usually find ways to make whatever tasks it is convenient for me based on my routine while killing two birds with one stone. Even if I have to invest some initial money to do so it ends up paying off in so many ways.

I remember before I was taught that in order to balance your budget for example you should use all these fancy programs, have these well thought out spreadsheets, etc. However, that simply felt like I was always going out of my way just to track the items. So I was thinking, since I always carry no balance on my credit card why can’t I use these types of statements for example as my official expense reports? It’s something that I usually have to double check anyways to make sure I haven’t been charged extra for example. To me it’s almost like the credit card company is agreeing to be my accountant. Because of that as well I used my credit card as much as possible and this allowed me to essentially do two things at once.

Trying to combine tasks definitely helps me in managing my finances better and so maybe it will for you too if you find it tedious and dis-motivating in having to review and organize your finances. Who knows, maybe there is like an app or something where you can auto scan your daily expense into your phone and your budget will display right in-front of you each day since you use the thing all day anyways as an example.